SON Collaborating With ISO To Deploy ISO 3700 To Nigeria For Smarter, Efficient Cities-DG

By Gift Samuel, The Sight News

Abuja-The Director General, Standard Organization of Nigeria, SON, Mr. Osita Aboloma has disclosed that SON in collaboration with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is working to deploy ISO standard 3700 to make Nigerian cities smarter and more efficient.

The DG who made the disclosure while speaking to newsmen on Monday in Abuja, said that the ISO 3700 code sets out clear guidelines for the establishment of smart cities and as well improve the standards of living through quality assurance.

He further said that the beauty of smart cities is that it does not have to Start from scratch,adding that an old or existing city can be made smart
by improving the transport system, the sewage system and saving energy by deploying smart metres, smart traffic lights and others.

According to him, “this year’s World Standard Day 2017 theme is “Standards make cities smart”, it is for us to look for ways of deploying standards as to make our cities smarter. Already we have smart cities in Nigeria.

“We have the Eko Atlantic city that is designed to be smart, where different aspects of the cities will interact with each other, to improve the quality of lives of the people living in the cities. This is in line with the foreign trend all over the world because people are migrating from the rural areas to the urban cities.

“from the statistics, we are aware that an average of 20,000 people move into the cities every year and these exigencies of urbanization throws up new challenges and for us to cope, we have to make our cities smarter, more efficient to accommodate the people that are flocking into the cities” Aboloma noted.

He explained that the existing challenges are particularly the infrastructural and human capital deficiencies, which he said are the reasons for deploying standards to actively solve these challenges of poor sewage management, poor electricity, poor road traffic, stating also that, “we deploy sensors, we deploy technologies to manage traffic, energy and to generally discharge the core mandate of SON, that is improving lives to standard”.

The World Standard Day is celebrated 14th of October every year and is in collaboration with the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO); the International Electro-technical Commission (IEC) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).